Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Dreaming of Names

A few weeks ago I had a remarkable dream. I intend not only to remark upon it, but to relate it to you in its entirety. I believe that it was an unusual dream that meant more than I have yet discovered. I am waiting to see how the messages it holds fit into my life.
The dream:
Derek and I are sitting in the steel frame of a very tall office building with our feet hanging over the edge. We can see hills in the distance and green grass at the bottom of the building. There is a street not too far away, and people walking up and down sidewalks. The grass all turns brown and the sun begins to set, and a man walks up the stairs of the steel building and stops right near us. He is smiling and says, "isn't it a beautiful day?" And I say to him, "The world is broken". He shakes his head and says, "It's a beautiful day". I scream at him "This world is broken!" and he continues up the stairs into the higher parts of the building.
It is now night time and the street lights illuminate from the ground up. The outline of the steel building stretches out in front of us on the ground. Suddenly the man who has passed us on the stairs is falling from the top of the building. It appears he has jumped, and has fallen far from the building into the median of the busy street. I feel convicted for screaming at him and feel like I am the reason he has jumped from the top of the building.
I run out of the building and across the road. People are already gathered around his broken body taking pictures and video taping. I push them away and shout at them to stop. They won't go, and I shout until I realize that they don't know his name. I am certain this will make a difference to them and at last I shout, "This man's name is Eugene!" The flashbulbs cease and the murmuring crowd quiets down and disperses.
Eugene has fallen so hard that his body is pushed deep into the turf. He has fallen on the legs of a small child. As soon as the crowd of media begin to melt away a new group appears around me. The child with its legs pinned under Eugene's broken body tells me its name (I can't remember it, or the gender of the child). Soon children are crowding hard around us as I hold the pinned child's hand and each of the children are telling me their name. The sound of their voices telling me their names becomes very loud.
I notice then that Eugene is still breathing, though his body is broken and bloody.
Men in yellow suits come running down the street with huge spotlights on rollers and are clearing the street for emergency crews. Several ambulances come rushing down the street from the West and it seems like there is another emergency somewhere nearby and to the East. Fire trucks and police cars zoom past on both sides of the road, and emergency personnel flock past on foot because there weren't enough vehicles. The street is crowded with people rushing East.
One ambulance stops near me and the crowd of children all standing in the median. As I watch them lift Eugene's body out of the lawn, I notice the pinned child is gone. I turn in a full circle before I see the child walking down the street lamp splotched street, in the same direction that all the trucks were going, holding the hand of a firefighter. And I am sad I did not get to say good-bye.

2 comments:

  1. vivid dreams do sit with me for a long while too. . . aren't you going to have more and more vivid dreams as your pregnancy continues? Could make journaling lots of fun.

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  2. Okay, so my computer was logged into an odd blogger. . . ? the last post was from Me :)

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